1926 - 1931 (#30 - 59)

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#59 - Dracula (1931)

Dracula is a 1931 American pre-Code vampire-horror film directed by Tod Browning and starring Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula. The film was produced by Universal and is based on the 1924 stage play Dracula by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston, which in turn is loosely based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker.

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#58 - Frankenstein (1931)

Frankenstein is a 1931 American pre-Code horror monster film from Universal Pictures directed by James Whale and adapted from the play by Peggy Webling (which in turn is based on the novel of the same name by Mary Shelley), about a scientist and his assistant who dig up corpses to build a man animated by electricity, but his assistant accidentally gives the creature an abnormal, murderer's brain. The resultant monster is portrayed by Boris Karloff in the film. A hit with both audiences and critics, the film was followed by multiple sequels and has become arguably the most iconic horror film in history.

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#57 - City Lights (1931)

City Lights is a 1931 American pre-Code silent romantic comedy film written, produced, directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin. The story follows the misadventures of Chaplin's Tramp as he falls in love with a blind girl (Virginia Cherrill) and develops a turbulent friendship with an alcoholic millionaire (Harry Myers). Although sound films were on the rise when Chaplin started developing the script in 1928, he decided to continue working with silent productions. City Lights marked the first time Chaplin composed the film score to one of his productions and it was written in six weeks with Arthur Johnston.

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#56 - Public Enemy (1931)

The Public Enemy is a 1931 American all-talking pre-Code gangster film produced and distributed by Warner Bros. The film was directed by William A. Wellman and stars James Cagney, Jean Harlow, Edward Woods, Donald Cook, and Joan Blondell. The film relates the story of a young man's rise in the criminal underworld in prohibition-era urban America. The screenplay is based on an unpublished novel by two former street thugs — Beer and Blood by John Bright and Kubec Glasmon — who had witnessed some of Al Capone's murderous gang rivalries in Chicago.

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#55 - Limite (1931)

Limite is a film by Brazilian director and writer Mário Peixoto. Cited by some as the greatest of all Brazilian films, this 120-minute silent experimental feature by novelist and poet Peixoto, who never completed another film, was seen by Orson Welles and won the admiration of many, from Sergei Eisenstein to Georges Sadoul to Walter Salles.

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#54 - M (1931)

M (A City Searches for a Murderer) is a 1931 German horror drama-thriller film directed by Fritz Lang and starring Peter Lorre. The film was written by Lang and his wife, Thea von Harbou, and was the director's first sound film. The film revolves around the actions of a serial killer of children and the manhunt for him, conducted by both the police and the criminal underworld.

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#53 - Little Caesar (1930)

Little Caesar is a 1931 American pre-Code crime film distributed by Warner Brothers, directed by Mervyn LeRoy, and starring Edward G. Robinson, Glenda Farrell, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. The film tells the story of a hoodlum who ascends the ranks of organized crime until he reaches its upper echelons. The storyline was adapted from the novel of the same name by William R. Burnett. Little Caesar was Robinson's breakthrough role and immediately made him a major film star. The film is often listed as one of the first full-fledged gangster films and continues to be well received by critics.

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#52 - Earth (1930)

Earth is a 1930 Soviet silent film by Ukrainian director Alexander Dovzhenko, concerning the process of collectivization and the hostility of Kulak landowners. It is Part 3 of Dovzhenko's "Ukraine Trilogy" (along with Zvenigora and Arsenal). Earth is regarded as Dovzhenko's masterpiece.

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#51 - L'age D'or (1930)

L'Age d'Or commonly translated as The Golden Age or Age of Gold, is a 1930 French surrealist satirical comedy film directed by Luis Buñuel about the insanities of modern life, the hypocrisy of the sexual mores of bourgeois society and the value system of the Roman Catholic Church. The screenplay is by Salvador Dalí and Buñuel. L'Age d'Or was one of the first sound films made in France, along with Prix de Beauté and Under the Roofs of Paris.

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#50 - The Blue Angel (1930)

The Blue Angel is a 1930 German tragicomedic film directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring Emil Jannings, Marlene Dietrich and Kurt Gerron. It is based on Heinrich Mann's 1905 novel Professor Unrat (Professor Garbage) and set in Weimar Germany. The Blue Angel presents the tragic transformation of a respectable professor to a cabaret clown and his descent into madness. The film is the first feature-length German full-talkie and brought Dietrich international fame. In addition, it introduced her signature song, Friedrich Hollaender and Robert Liebmann's "Falling in Love Again (Can't Help It)". It is considered to be a classic of German cinema.

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#49 - All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

All Quiet on the Western Front is a 1930 American epic pre-Code war film based on the Erich Maria Remarque novel of the same name. Directed by Lewis Milestone, it stars Louis Wolheim, Lew Ayres, John Wray, Arnold Lucy and Ben Alexander. Considered a realistic and harrowing account of warfare in World War I, the film was the first to win the Academy Awards for both Outstanding Production and Best Director.

Its sequel, The Road Back (1937), portrays members of the 2nd Company returning home after the war.

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#48 - Pandora's Box (1929)

Pandora's Box is a 1929 German silent melodrama film Directed by Austrian filmmaker Georg Wilhelm Pabst, the film stars Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortnerand Francis Lederer. Brooks' portrayal of a seductive, thoughtless young woman whose raw sexuality and uninhibited nature bring ruin to herself and those who love her, although initially unappreciated, eventually made the actress a star.

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#47 - The Man with a Movie Camera (1929)

Man with a Movie Camera is an experimental 1929 Soviet silent documentary film, directed by Dziga Vertov showing urban life in the Soviet cities of Kiev, Kharkov, Moscow and Odessa. It has no actors. From dawn to dusk Soviet citizens are shown at work and at play, and interacting with the machinery of modern life. To the extent that it can be said to have "characters," they are the cameramen of the title, the film editor, and the modern Soviet Union they discover and present in the film. Man with a Movie Camera is famous for the range of cinematic techniques Vertov invented, deployed or developed, such as double exposure, fast motion, slow motion, freeze frames, jump cuts, split screens, Dutch angles, extreme close-ups, tracking shots, reversed footage, stop motion animations and self-reflexive visuals.

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#46 - Blackmail (1929)

Blackmail is a 1929 British thriller drama film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Anny Ondra, John Longden, and Cyril Ritchard. Based on the 1928 play of the same name by Charles Bennett, the film is about a London woman who is blackmailed after killing a man who tries to rape her. After starting production as a silent film, British International Pictures decided to convert Blackmail into a sound film during filming, becoming the first successful European dramatic talkie.

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#45 - A Throw of The Dice (1929)

A Throw of Dice (Prapancha Pash) is a 1929 silent film by German-born director Franz Osten, based on an episode from the Indian epic The Mahabharata. Osten made 19 films in India between 1926 and 1939, and A Throw of Dice formed the final part of a trilogy of Indo-German productions by Osten and Indian actor-producer Himanshu Rai, the other two being Prem Sanyas (1925) and Shiraz (1928). After a gap, Osten returned to India, and worked on Bombay Talkies with Rai. During the production of Kangan (The Bangle) in 1939, Osten, a member of the Nazi Party, was arrested by British colonial officials, and was incarcerated until the end of the Second World War.

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#44 - Un Chien Andalou (1929)

Un Chien Andalou is a 1929 French silent surrealist short film by Spanish director Luis Buñuel and artist Salvador Dalí. It was Buñuel's first film. Un Chien Andalou has no plot in the conventional sense of the word. The chronology of the film is disjointed, jumping from the initial "once upon a time" to "eight years later" without the events or characters changing very much. It uses dream logic in narrative flow that can be described in terms of then-popular Freudian free association, presenting a series of tenuously related scenes.

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#43 - The Crowd (1928)

The Crowd is a 1928 American silent film directed by King Vidor and starring James Murray, Eleanor Boardman and Bert Roach. The film is an influential and acclaimed feature which was nominated at the very first Academy Award presentation in 1928 for several awards, including a unique and artistic production for MGM, as well as the award for best director for King Vidor.

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#42 - The Docks of New York (1928)

The Docks of New York (1928) is a silent drama film directed by Josef von Sternberg and starring George Bancroft, Betty Compson, and Olga Baclanova. The movie was adapted by Jules Furthman from the John Monk Saunders story The Dock Walloper.

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#41 - Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)

The Passion of Joan of Arc is a 1928 silent French film based on the actual record of the trial of Joan of Arc. The film was directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer and stars Renée Jeanne Falconetti as Joan. It is widely regarded as a landmark of cinema, especially for its production, Dreyer's direction and Falconetti's performance, which is often listed as one of the finest in cinema history. The film summarizes the time that Joan of Arc was a captive of England, depicting her trial and execution.

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#40 - Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928)

Steamboat Bill, Jr. is a 1928 silent comedy film starring Buster Keaton. The film is the last product of Keaton's independent production team and set of gag writers. It was not a box-office success and became the last picture Keaton made for United Artists. Charles Reisner directed the film, and the credited story writer was Carl Harbaugh, although Keaton wrote the script and publicly called Harbaugh useless but "on the payroll". The film is known for what might be considered Keaton's most famous film stunt: The facade of an entire house falls on top of him while he stands in the perfect spot to pass through the open attic window instead of being flattened.

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#39 - Storm Over Asia (1928)

Storm over Asia is a 1928 Russian film directed by Vsevolod Pudovkin, written by Osip Brik and Ivan Novokshonov, and starring Valéry Inkijinoff. It is the final film in Pudovkin's "revolutionary trilogy", alongside Mother (1926) and The End of St. Petersburg (1927).

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#38 - October: Ten Days That Shook the World (1927)

October: Ten Days That Shook the World is a 1928 Soviet silent historical film by Sergei Eisenstein and Grigori Aleksandrov. It is a celebratory dramatization of the 1917 October Revolution commissioned for the tenth anniversary of the event.

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#37 - Metropolis (1927)

Metropolis is a 1927 German expressionist science-fiction drama film directed by Fritz Lang. The silent film is regarded as a pioneering work of the science-fiction genre in movies, being among the first feature-length movies of the genre. Made in Germany during the Weimar Period, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and follows the attempts of Freder, the wealthy son of the city's master, and Maria, a saintly figure to the workers, to overcome the vast gulf separating the classes of their city, and bring the workers together with Joh Fredersen, the master of the city. The film's message is encompassed in the final inter-title: "The Mediator Between the Head and the Hands Must Be the Heart".

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#36 - Sunrise (1927)

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans is a 1927 American silent romantic drama film directed by German director F. W. Murnau. Murnau chose to use the then new Fox Movietone sound-on-film system, making Sunrise one of the first feature films with a synchronized musical score and sound effects soundtrack. The film's legacy has endured, and it is now widely considered a masterpiece and one of the greatest films ever made. Many have called it the greatest film of the silent era.

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#35 - The Unknown (1927)

The Unknown is a 1927 American silent horror film directed by Tod Browning and featuring Lon Chaney as carnival knife thrower Alonzo the Armless and Joan Crawford as the scantily clad carnival girl he hopes to marry. Chaney did remarkable and convincing collaborative scenes with real-life armless double Paul Desmuke whose legs and feet were used to manipulate objects such as knives and cigarettes in frame with Chaney's upper body and face.

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#34 - The Jazz Singer (1927)

The Jazz Singer is a 1927 American musical film directed by Alan Crosland . As the first feature-length motion picture with not only a synchronized recorded music score, but also lip-synchronous singing and speech in several isolated sequences, its release heralded the commercial ascendance of sound films and ended the silent film era. The film depicts the fictional story of Jakie Rabinowitz, a young man who defies the traditions of his devout Jewish family. After singing popular tunes in a beer garden he is punished by his father, a hazzan (cantor), prompting Jakie to run away from home. Some years later, now calling himself Jack Robin, he has become a talented jazz singer. He attempts to build a career as an entertainer but his professional ambitions ultimately come into conflict with the demands of his home and heritage.

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#33 - The Kid Brother (1927)

The Kid Brother is a 1927 American classic comedy silent film starring Harold Lloyd. It was successful and popular upon release and today is considered by critics and fans to be one of Lloyd's best films, integrating elements of comedy, romance, drama, and character development.

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#32 - Napoleon (1927)

Napoléon is a 1927 silent French epic film written, produced, and directed by Abel Gance that tells the story of Napoleon's early years. The film is recognised as a masterwork of fluid camera motion, produced in a time when most camera shots were static. Many innovative techniques were used to make the film, including fast cutting, extensive close-ups, a wide variety of hand-held camera shots, location shooting, point of view shots, multiple-camera setups, multiple exposure, superimposition, underwater camera, kaleidoscopic images, film tinting, split screen and mosaic shots, multi-screen projection, and other visual effects. A revival of Napoléon in the mid-1950s influenced the filmmakers of the French New Wave.

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#31 - The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926)

The Adventures of Prince Achmed is a 1926 German animated fairytale film by Lotte Reiniger. It is the oldest surviving animated feature film. The Adventures of Prince Achmed features a silhouette animation technique Reiniger had invented which involved manipulated cutouts made from cardboard and thin sheets of lead under a camera. The technique she used for the camera is similar to Wayang shadow puppets, though hers were animated frame by frame, not manipulated in live action. The story is based on elements taken from the One Thousand and One Nights, specifically "The Story of Prince Ahmed and the Fairy Paribanou" featured in Andrew Lang's Blue Fairy Book.

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#30 - The General (1926)

The General is a 1926 American silent comedy film. It was inspired by the Great Locomotive Chase, a true story of an event that occurred during the American Civil War. The film stars Buster Keaton who co-directed it with Clyde Bruckman. At the time of its initial release, The General, an action-adventure-comedy made toward the end of the silent era, was not well received by critics and audiences, resulting in mediocre box office returns. Because of its then-huge budget and failure to turn a significant profit, Keaton lost his independence as a filmmaker and was forced into a restrictive deal with MGM.